NEW from The Mr Existence Series -

"Mr Existence Finds His Blue Poodle"
pen & ink with digital collage by Mick Mather

All the bright and sparkly colors in this piece are from an old pen & ink drawing I did in the 1970's. I was playing about and in up to my waist with pointillism at the time. As a slight diversion from one dot at a time, a few pieces used broader squares of color...similar, but not matching, a style that made Chuck Close a household name. So, jumping ahead some 25 years, I scanned the original, cropped it to fit my usual working frame and began looking at it - turning and looking, turning and looking. Not unlike those magic 3-D prints that reveal a hidden image once you figure out how to unfocus and allow it to jump out at you, I spotted something. Spot! As in "see Spot run!" Well, not exactly, since it's a French Poodle I happened to see...and so, after a bit of digital collage and the usual manipulations via the super secret array, voila! Was Mr Existence excited about finding that darned doggy? You can bet your flea-bitten collar that he was. :D

NEW from The Mr Existence Series -

"Man and the Moon"
$50 Unframed - LUCAS GALLERY
digitally manipulated fractal flame & collage by Mick Mather

This is a series of work that goes all the way back to my earliest days of digital drawings in MS Paint. You can see the piece that got me started down this road in this block-of-4 artistamps or, since you're here, why not go see the whole series. Come to that, yes, I know I have some work to do to make things continuitous as regards Mr. vs Mister but, what the hey! I'm too busy looking at the current addition to worry about that right now ... hmm, I better send myself an email reminder. Anyway, there's a connection here with the lower right artistamp and we must ask the question, is Mr. Existence tired of being The Man in the Moon? Here, he seems to holding the moon at arms length having just accomplished some prestidigitation using the distraction of a yellow handkerchief. Applause, applause!

NEW from The Mr Existence Series -

"Mr Existence, Again With the Dog"
digital collage by Mick Mather

While fiddling aimlessly about a few weeks ago, up popped that dog again. It's in the background if you look carefully past the final layers of the white line doggy drawing. It surely fits into this old series and it was fun to work on. Now - forgive the continuous interludes with my teeth - it's time for another pain pill. :|

NEW from The Mr Existence Series -

"Sister Existence on a Dog Day Afternoon"
digital collage by Mick Mather

I was playing around with a few elements last night, including a wonderfully scribbly drawing by my 3-year old granddaughter. This was layered over a rough 'n tumble, hazy, blocky base of cut 'n paste before running the whole business through the super secret array. It didn't take long to realize that we had another piece where Sister Existence is out walking the dogs. "What dogs?", you might legitimately inquire. Let me see, pretend this is one of those "Where's Waldo" books except that we're looking for "Fido" instead. Well, two of them actually. :D

NEW from The Mr Existence Series -

"Sister Existence Loses The Dog"
digital collage by Mick Mather

A promise is a promise...but, look! I'm feeling like crap and - do I really have to tell you? - it's SUPER BOWL SUNDAY!!! So, here's the new piece I said that I'd upload. Need background? Scroll back to yesterday. Now, let me see...yup, everything is all lined up over there. Chips, crunchy cheeto's, dip, olives, brandy, beer, coca cola, shasta grape, ice cream bars, choc'lit chip cookie dough ice cream, tootsie roll pops, deviled eggs, hot & sour soup, pork steaks, froot loops, milk, cheese, hot Italian sausage, smoked beef stick, spray-on cheese, dipping cheese...damn! I know that I'm forgetting something! Oh well.

Sick as a dog? -

"Mr Existence Loses The Dog"

digital drawing by Mick Mather

The title of of tonight's post refers to the fact that I'm still darned sick...YES! Again! Anyway, while transferring some of my old work (stored on floppy disks) I happened upon a long forgotten series of digital works. The first, seen above, is a very simple drawing done in MS Paint on an ancient Windows 3.1 OS and was literally one of the first things that I accomplished in the mid-1990's. The drawing was soon turned into an artists' postage stamp, or artistamp as it's often referred to in the Eternal Network. Since I had always been interested in stamp collecting, creating my own commemoratives was a logical step for me and what you see above is, in philatelic circles, called a Maximum Post Card. I actually sent quite a number of these through the mail back then. Below is the block of all four digital drawings as they exist as artistamps:

Block-of-4 Artistamps

digital drawings by Mick Mather

A little close inspection will reveal that I was still working on my square smiley logo - affectionately known as the Cubic Rube - that grew out of a simple, self-imposed Y2K Design Project to take any popular icon from the 20th Century and then redesign it for the 21st Century. Over the years it's been simplified, refined and now does service as my digital signature; but, I digress. The other night I began working on a digital collage of a young woman walking her dog and, as the work progressed, the dog was edged out of the frame - lost! Light bulb moment and scramble, scramble to re-investigate these old pieces for tonight's post. So, a NEW series is born - would that be reborn do you think? - and I'm excited over the possibilities. Tomorrow night? Of course, I'll post the new piece...stay tuned.